Tour de France: Two in a row for Orica-GreenEdge

By
Euronews

Orica-GreenEdge enjoyed their second straight win in the Tour de France on Tuesday after reigning supreme in stage four’s team time trial.

A day after Simon Gerrans won the outfit’s first ever Tour de France stage the Australian team found themselves atop the podium again following the 25km group effort around Nice.

The nine-man squad clocked a record average speed of 57.8 kilometres an hour en route to posting a winning time of 25 minutes and 56 seconds.

It was the fastest stage in the Tour’s history.

The Omega Pharma-QuickStep team had looked on course for victory after setting the fastest time through the intermediate check point.

The Belgian world champions then crossed the finish line to set the early benchmark only to see their time beaten by the Aussies by just over 7 tenths of a second.

British-based Team Sky rounded off the podium in third place.

Boasting Tour de France title hope Chris Froome, Team Sky crossed over three seconds down on the stage winners Orica-GreenEdge, who suffered an embarrassing day one when the team bus got stuck under the finish line banner.

Orica-GreenEdge’s win lifts 33-year-old Gerrans into the leader’s yellow jersey at the expense of Belgian Jan Bakelants who lost 29 seconds on the day with his RadioShack team.

Stage five is for the sprinters as it’s a rolling 228.5 kilometre trek from Cagnes-sur-mer to Marseille.